Thread by @egavactip

A New Year's Thread on Extremism Past

1. We are now approaching 2019; let's hope it was better than 2018. It's interesting for me, as a historian, to look at right-wing extremism as it was 20 years ago, in 1999, which was something of a time of transition. We can look at white

2. supremacy & its various segments, the anti-government "patriot" movement and its segments, and some of the extreme right single issue movements. As general context for all of this, it is worth pointing out that 1994-1995 saw a great resurgence of the extreme right in the US,

3. both for white supremacists and anti-government extremists alike.

White supremacists in 1999 were still riding the surge of the mid-1990s. The late 1990s was a time of great activity for neo-Nazis, perhaps at their peak before the crash of the mid-2000s. The National

4. Alliance, the largest neo-Nazi group with about 1,500 members, was riding high under its leader William Pierce and in 1999 it would buy "Resistance Records," perhaps the largest white power music label at that time--and a nice source of income. Aryan Nations, the #2 neo-Nazi

5. group was starting to feel the cracks from its aging, sick leader Richard Butler but had yet to suffer the major splintering and fracturing it would in a few years. The #3 neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Movement, was up and coming.

Aryan Nations was not just a neo-

6. Nazi group but also a Christian Identity group, and Christian Identity, that virulently racist and anti-Semitic religious sect was still at the time one of the major sources of hardcore white supremacy and white supremacist violence. Many of its key leaders would die off in

7. the next decade but in 1999 they were around and active, esp. Pete Peters in Colorado.

Also strong, as they had been for most of the 1990s, were racist skinheads, which were responsible for a lot of the white supremacist violence of the late 1990s. The Hammerskins in

8. particular were noteworthy.

Interestingly, the late 1990s were also a time of (relative) strength for traditional white supremacist groups like Ku Klux Klan groups and their non-robed allies, such as the Council of Conservative Citizens, at its strongest in the late 1990s.

9. In the late 1990s a number of active Klan groups held public Klan rallies all across the eastern US--far, far more than could be seen 20 years later. In Ohio alone, different Klan groups held 6 different public rallies in 1999.

Finally, white supremacist prison gangs were

10. beginning to make the transition from being active almost entirely behind bars to being active on the streets as well. In Texas, the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas and the Aryan Circle started to have noticeable street activity; in California, the rise of the Nazi Low Riders

11. was causing problems in that state.

All that energy and activity naturally had an affect on white supremacist violence. This would climax in a series of major episodes of white supremacist violence in the summer, causing the summer of 1999 to be dubbed the "summer of hate."

12. It started with the shooting spree of Benjamin Smith, a member of the World Church of the Creator, itself a major feature of the white supremacist landscape of 1999 (it would collapse 5 years later). From July 2-4, Smith went on a two-state shooting spree targeting racial and

13. ethnic minorities, killing 2 and wounding 11 before killing himself as police caught up to him. That same month, in California, brothers Benjamin and James Williams went on a spree of violence, killing a gay couple, and setting fire to three synagogues and an abortion clinic.

14. In August, Buford Furrow, a member of Aryan Nations, walked into a Jewish day care center in southern California and opened fire, injuring three children and two employees. Luckily, none of those injuries were fatal but Furrow subsequent shot an Asian-American postal worker

15. before surrendering to the FBI. Furrow said he wanted his act to be a "wake-up call to America to kill Jews."

The "Patriot" movement--those conspiracy-oriented, anti-government extremists that include the militia movement, the sovereign citizen movement and the tax protest

16. movement were also very active in 1999. The militia movement had had some drop off in numbers but wouldn't really decrease until the early 2000s. Many anti-government extremists were quite jazzed over what the Y2K bug might bring. This was a major programming issue that

17. would potentially affect many mainframe and other computers on the rollover from Dec 31 1999 to January 1 2000. Although much, much time effort and money had been invested to fix the problem, no one knew if everything had been fixed--or if many or most computer-driven

18. systems might simply stop working at the stroke of midnight. Many extremists were excited about that notion--some in the militia movement thought it was part of a government conspiracy to bring about martial law and were prepared to fight against that; others were more

19. survivalist in nature and just wanted to survive the coming collapse. The news show Nightline had me on one night in 1999 to explain how extremists might react, and they demanded to know how to get hold of me on New Year's Eve, just in case the sh*t went down (I gave them

20. the number of my friend's house whose party I would be at). Gary North, the Christian Reconstructionist, was having a blast promoting Y2K disaster notions and selling survivalist stuff. And, in fact, in late December 1999, the FBI arrested a Florida militia leader, Donald

21. Beauregard, for plotting to rob National Guard armories, steal explosives and blow up power stations, a nuclear power plant and more, all in connection with Y2K. That same month, in California, members of the San Joaquin Militia were arrested for their own terrorist plot to

22. destroy a propane storage facility, a television tower, an electrical substation and to kill a federal judge.

While the militia dreamed of Y2K, sovereign citizens were busy spreading their pseudo-legal theories to anyone who would listen. Their "common law courts" had

23. become less popular but they were still busy with bogus liens, bogus trusts and fictitious financial instruments. Indeed, in 1999 a popular new set of theories known as "strawman theory" or "redemption" swept the whole country and added ideas to the movement that are still

24. very popular today, 20 years later.

The tax protest movement was also doing very well. In 1997, Congress had stripped much of the IRS's enforcement budget, allowing tax protest gurus to promote their bogus theories across the country with impunity, allowing the movement to

25. grow considerably in strength (the IRS would not get some of that money back until the mid-2000s, after which they were able to go after a number of tax protesters).

26. First, anti-abortion extremists were quite active. Eric Rudolph, having bombed an abortion clinic in Alabama in 1998, was still on the run, despite a huge manhunt, and he would not be caught for years. Meanwhile, in 1999, authorities finally caught up with Clayton Lee

27. Waagner, on his way to murder an abortion provider in Washington State. However, he would escape from captivity and embark upon an extended crime spree that included mailing hundreds of hoax anthrax letters to women's clinics.

28. Finally, in the area of anti-immigration extremism, it is worth noting that 1999 was the year that saw the debut of border vigilantes patrolling the border with Mexico, thanks to Ranch Rescue, the first prominent such group. It began in Texas but soon moved to Arizona.

29. All in all, 1999 was a year filled to the brim with hate, extremism and extremist violence. Let's hope that 2019 is very far from that.

Addendum: if you would like to browse through major extremist-related criminal incidents of 1999, esp. arrests, convictions and sentencings, see these files from my old website:

web.archive.org/web/2000081701…
web.archive.org/web/2000081701…
web.archive.org/web/2000081519…
web.archive.org/web/2000051004…